#Business leader says wealthy New Yorkers ‘don’t want to come back’ to the city

Wealthy New Yorkers who fled the city during the coronavirus crisis “don’t want to come back” — and may be further deterred by talk of rising taxes, an economic watchdog warned Sunday.

“They want to go to the office, but they don’t want to come back to the city,” Partnership for NYC President Kathryn Wylde said Sunday on WABC 770 AM’s “The Cats Roundtable” radio show.

“It’s hard to move a company… but it’s much easier for individuals to move,” she said, noting that most offices plan to allow remote work indefinitely.

The top one-percent of earners currently account for 40 percent of New York state tax revenue, according to numbers crunched by Wylde’s pro-business group last month.

New York state faces massive deficits due to the impacts of the coronavirus crisis, leading some left-wing politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to suggest raising taxes on billionaires.

Wylde warned that rich New Yorkers will be even more inclined to stay in the Hamptons or Palm Beach, Florida, if New York raises taxes.

“I am very concerned about all the demonstrations against billionaires,” said Wylde, whose group’s members include Fortune 500 companies, international tech firms, real-estate titans and the New York Post’s parent company News Corp, according to the Partnership’s website.

“The threats of raising taxes on the wealthy. That concerns me, because we should be… trying to figure out how to get the half million people who left the city for the COVID… to come back.”

She added, “It’s a big concern that we’re going to lose more of our tax base then we’ve already lost.”